Five years in New Zealand (1859 to 1864)Booth, Robert B.
History
Five years in New Zealand (1859 to 1864)
Booth, Robert B.
New Zealand -- Description and travel
It was different with the other. He was an unfortunate of that class so
frequently met with in the Colonies, a "ne'er-do-well" who had while at
home contracted habits of dissipation, and he was sent out to New
Zealand under the then very mistaken supposition that he would thereby
be cured. But there is no permanent cure for such a man; his life may be
prolonged a little by enforced abstinence, but he will never, or rarely
ever, recover his power of will so far as to avoid temptation if it
comes in his way. If it be possible to do such a man any real good,
there may be some chance for him at home, where he would have the care
and influence of his friends to support him, but there is no chance for
him in the Colonies. Such a man will under pressure abstain for months,
but the moment that pressure is removed he will make for the nearest
place where his propensity can be indulged, and give himself up to the
devil body and soul, so long as he has the means to do so, or can obtain
what he desires by fair means or foul. He knows no shame; all
honourable and manly feeling has become callous within him; and it is a
happy release indeed for all connected with him when his pitiable life
is ended.
It was a custom of Mr. Lee's to send yearly to Christchurch a flock of
fat wethers for sale, and as I wished to proceed there on the business I
referred to, I was to be entrusted with the charge of them, in company
with a Scottish shepherd, by name Campbell, who was a new arrival in the
country.
The sheep numbered four hundred, and we had to drive them nearly three
hundred miles, and deliver them in as good condition as when they left.
We started early in December, the hottest time of the year, carrying
what we needed for camping out on one pack horse. It was by no means a
pleasure journey to drive, or rather feed, sheep along for three hundred
miles at ten to fifteen miles a day, over dry and hot plains with not a
tree to shelter one, and to stay awake turn about night after night to
watch them. Mr. Lee accompanied us as far as the Waiou river, over which
it occupied the best part of a day to cross the sheep, then he left us
to proceed to Christchurch to seek and bring back the Government Scab
Inspector to meet us at the Hurunui river, the boundary, and there to
pass the sheep, otherwise they would not be permitted to enter the
Canterbury province.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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